Engines
As of Buildcraft 2.0.1 there is the option to use pneumatic engines to power the various machines in BuildCraft. Engines may be picked up by breaking them with any type of pick. Each has various strengths and requirements to function. Engines can be daisy-chained. That is, one engine can send its energy to another, which can then send the combined energy to another engine or to the mechanism to be powered. This is useful for driving a mechanism faster, but incurs a danger of overheating. If the energy is not being removed from the system at about the same rate the system is producing it, the engine at the machine end of the chain may explode. A more efficent way to do this is to use Conductive Pipe. This can be used over longer distances with no chance of exploding for redstone or steam engines . You can monitor the temperature of the engine by the color of its core. Blue represents a cold engine, green represents an engine that is warming up, yellow represents an engine that is running at the optinum efficency, red represents an engine that is in danger of overheating and an engine that is bright red has overheated and will explode if not turned off or cooled down very quickly. In SMP for beta 2.2.1 of buildcraft, the energy folder should be installed last or the engines won't work properly. Redstone Engine Redstone engines only need a redstone current for power, and do not provide sufficient power to operate machines. The engine will not overheat and explode if it is powering an object, but if left on not connected to an object it will 'explode if unattended. The easiest way to work around this is to use a redstone repeater circuit to power the engine, thus giving the engine time to power down between redstone pulses. Redstone engines are at their best used as powering for extractor (wooden) pipes , for solid items or liquids. They are sufficient to execute this task and don't need a significant installation to function... as well as little place (engine itself and a switch and all is fine in two cubes). They're usually unsufficient to make bigger tool work (quarry , mining well , oil refinery , pumps ,... require a lot more power) Steam Engine This mid-range engine is significantly more powerful than the Redstone Engine but uses burnable fuel, such as wood or coal, as well as a redstone current. Combustion Engine The most powerful and most expensive engine to make and run as it uses fuel , oil or lava as fuel. This engine will overheat rapidly, even if it has work to do so you can place water into it to cool the engine. If you found a large source of oil, then making such engines is a priority. Once filled with oil , they burn a huge amount of time before needing refilling. However, cooling remains a critical issue. Left too long without monitoring, an explosion due to overheating may destroy many of the installation (engines , pipes , switches, structures) in a radius of about five to ten squares. Those engines are to be considered at their best amongst an array of engines powering refuelling, cooling, and machines at same time. Use them at first to power a raffinery and have a sufficient reverve of fuel, then use fuel instead of oil to increase efficiency. 'Configuration of Power Source In the directory .minecraft/buildcraft/config the config file "buildcraft.cfg" contains a line starting "power.framework=". It defaults to "power.framework=buildcraft.core.RedstonePowerFramework" - This allows Buildcraft devices to be run directly from redstone pulses. To use engines, you must use the setting "power.framework=buildcraft.energy.PneumaticPowerFramework". Category:Machines Category:Engines